Postmodern "Split"

The way our culture thinks and sees the world affects everyone in our culture, including you and me. The way we start to correct our thinking is to first become aware that we do think the way our culture does and to realize that it is wrong. This is the part where you buckle your seat belts because in the past when I have pointed out to people where there thinking is wrong I've gotten a mixed bag of reactions, anger and hostility being one of my least favorites. We'll explore this over the next few post.

We live in the postmodern era because our cultures thinking is postmodern. Within the postmodern cultural landscape there is a wide and varied range of beliefs. This is referred to as pluralism (our generations own version of polytheism). In such a diverse environment of beliefs what is it that unifies these beliefs under the heading postmodernism? What exactly is postmodernism?

Postmodernism is complex, to be sure, but its basic principle is pretty simple. Postmodernism's starting point is a dichotomy. It splits reality into two separate spheres. This was inherited from Greek philosophy. This "split" can be traced down through the history of the church and western civilization. You could diagram it like this...

Plato: Form/Matter = Perfect/Imperfect
Gnosticism: Spirit/Body = Good/Evil
Thomas Aquinas: Grace/Nature = Supernatural add on/Built in goal or purpose
Emanuel Kant: Freedom/Nature = Man has meaning/Man is a machine
Postmodernism: Sacred/Secular, Value/Fact, Faith/Reason = Non-rational/Rational
Note: Look at the "/" symbol as meaning "verses" or "opposite of" or maybe even "in opposition too".

In the past philosophers and theologians tried unsuccessfully to reconcile the tension created by this "split" through reason. These men truly believed that there was a rational answer to the tension. Postmodernism's solution to the tension wasn't to reconcile them or bring them together but to separate them even further.

Classic philosophy viewed the world in terms of true and false (antithesis). That is, they believed that if one thing was true then its opposite was false. This formed the basics of logic and reason. For example, the law of non-contradiction says that something can not be A and Non-A at the same time and in the same relationship. (God can't both exist and not exist.)

Francis Schaeffer in his book Escape from Reason said that since the time of the Greeks until Hegel philosophy had three characteristics. The first was what he called rationalism, they believed that man had the ability to come to know truth all on his own without any outside help. The second was rationality, that is they believed reason was the proper tool to be used to come to the truth. The third was hope because these men believed that there was truth out there and their questions would be answered.

Postmodernism has given up hope of ever coming to the answers by reason. There is no absolute truth. Therefore, reason can't bring us to the answer. The only characteristic that postmodernism retains is rationalism, man is still viewed as the autonomous determiner of what is true.

Postmodernism no longer views things in terms of antithesis but rather they believe that what was looked at before as being true and its opposite false can be brought together to form a new "truth". The result being all things are relative. This new truth is not arrived at by reason (since that was rejected in rejecting antithesis) but by a "leap of faith".

The "leap of faith" is the hallmark of postmodernism. It attempts to solve the problem of the "split" by this "leap of faith". Postmodernism doesn't believe that there are rational answers to be found, no absolute truth to provide meaning to life. Instead, we are to jump to the conclusion that life has meaning inspite of the fact that there is no rational basis for that conclusion. Reason gives us facts but they do not lead to meaning.

As you can see, the solution postmodernism provides is no solution at all. You maybe asking, "what does this have to do with me?" I'll answer that in my next post.